


Blood and Water

by call_me_eli



Category: Feverwake - Victoria Lee
Genre: AngelWolf, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Procedure, TTC, The Traitor's Crown, Young Calix Lehrer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23919940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/call_me_eli/pseuds/call_me_eli
Summary: Calix's central line gets infected. While he spends his days feverish, Adalwolf and Raphael spend theirs worried.Set during The Traitor's Crown, the prequel novella to The Fever King.
Relationships: Implied Raphael/Adalwolf
Kudos: 17





	Blood and Water

**Author's Note:**

> Raphael is my new favorite, so I took what we got of him and ran with it. This fic is set during young!Calix's recovery after Adalwolf's militia rescues him from the hospital, during the one sentence in TTC where it's mentioned that Calix's central line gets infected. Just wanted to show him suffering slightly more....
> 
> Disclaimer: I wrote all the medical bits with help from an SOP I found on the internet. I don't actually have any in-depth medical knowledge, so if you know how these medical things go, then tell me I guess?
> 
> I still want to know what Raphael did in a past life to deserve BOTH Lehrer brothers in his current one. Someone help this man.
> 
> **Content notes: Medical/surgical procedure, descriptions of blood/infection, Calix Lehrer

Calix was Raphael’s sole focus these days, when he wasn’t meeting with Uriel. Adalwolf was worried, and he should be. His brother was in bad shape, his body ravaged from whatever the people in those labs had done to him. If Raphael thought Calix was scary to look at with that metal gag on his face, it was almost worse without it. 

Calix’s face was covered in scars, and many of the deeper wounds hadn’t fully healed, even after nearly two weeks. Raphael supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Even with a witching’s elevated immune system and healing ability, Calix was skin and bones, and more scar than skin. And there was another matter, one that Raphael had only mentioned to Adalwolf.

“He’ll need therapy after this,” Raphael said, as they traversed the corridors of the university on their way to Calix’s room. It used to be Wolf’s—Uriel’s—and Raphael had made the trek this way time and again. “You don’t know what they did to him in there.”

“I don’t want to see the fucking report,” Wolf said through gritted teeth. His jaw was clenched so tightly that Raphael could see the knot in his cheek, the white around his lips when he pressed them together.

“I don’t mean what’s in the report,” Raphael said, looking straight ahead, eyes fixed on a point so far away that it blurred in his vision. “They didn’t just mess with his body in that place. They fucked up his head, and I can’t heal that. He needs a psychiatrist.”

“Because there are so many of those around right now,” Wolf ground out, bitterness dripping from the words like poison. “Psychiatry doesn’t work, anyway. It’s not real.”

Raphael had heard this from him before, but it made his heart sink nonetheless. Raphael may not have been a psychologist or a neuroscientist, but he’d seen enough patients before he joined Wolf’s militia, before the government had swept his city and rounded up witchings for the army or experimentation or death that he knew when one needed therapy. No one— _no one_ —could go through what Wolf’s brother had and be completely fine afterwards. And Raphael had more evidence for that than Calix’s file or the marks on his body. On more than one occasion, Raphael had watched Calix writhe amid nightmares, reliving the terrors of that hospital, and had fought to wake him, fought against limbs that pushed back surprisingly strong against Raphael’s touch, and listened to Calix’s screams. The screams were always the worst.

“Whether you think so or not,” Raphael said, “he still needs help.”

“You’re already helping him,” Wolf said shortly. “And so am I.”

“Professional help,” Raphael clarified.

“You’re a doctor,” Wolf said. “That’s as professional as it gets. Or are you telling me that’s a fake ID you’ve got?”

“No,” Raphael sighed, resigned to the fact that Wolf simply would not listen to him, and yet unable to stop trying to make his point. “Are you saying you’d care if it was?”

“No,” Wolf said, and for the first time in days, Raphael saw the corner of Adalwolf’s mouth tick upward, almost a shadow of his wolfish grin.

“At least think about it,” Raphael said as they approached Calix’s bedroom door. “I don’t want to overwhelm him more than he already is, but once he’s strong enough, I think we should try it.”

“When you find one who can look at his face without running, I’ll consider it,” Wolf said, voice lowered so Calix wouldn’t hear them. Raphael had no answer for that. Even he had trouble looking Calix in the eye. He couldn’t imagine someone who hadn’t seen the horrors of war firsthand being able to do it.

Wolf turned the handle on the door, letting them into what used to be an office. The previously empty shelves were now lined with the books Calix had demanded Wolf bring him from the stacks—Wittgenstein, Herschel, Schopenhauer—one of which lay open in Calix’s lap.

“Hey,” Wolf said, approaching the bed. Calix didn’t look up, finger poised at the edge of a page, waiting to turn it. “How are you feeling?”

Calix didn’t answer until he’d finished his page, turned it, and read to the end of the paragraph. Even then, all he did was shrug. It was the wince that came with it that made Raphael’s brow furrow and his feet carry him closer.

“What hurts?” Raphael asked.

“What doesn’t?” Calix retorted.

Right. Stupid question.

“May I?” Raphael gestured to Calix’s chest, where the shirt they’d given him hung loose, revealing razor collarbones.

Probably also a stupid question, but Raphael still couldn’t stop thinking about the way Calix had reacted coming out of the anaesthesia. He remembered that moment, holding his own scalpel to his throat, Calix moments from telling him to sever his own carotid artery, four members of his staff to follow. He remembered the red rivulet that ran from the point of the scalpel at his throat, threatening to become a tide spraying out across the room if he didn’t say exactly the right thing. And Calix had done it all with words alone.

“Sure,” Calix said, sinking against his pillow, though he didn’t close his book.

Raphael tried not to appear apprehensive as he touched him. God, he’d never seen someone so fucking _mangled_ , and even as a doctor, it sent anxiety writhing in his stomach. He swallowed against it and tugged the loose fabric aside.

Calix’s central line was red and inflamed, the skin around the catheter entry site angry and raw. Raphael sucked a breath through his teeth, and Wolf blanched beside him. Calix appeared unaffected, like this was merely a small mishap among all the other terrible things that had already happened to him. He looked almost like he expected this, and in truth, the thought had crossed Raphael’s mind, too. The university wasn’t exactly a sanitary environment, even without students and professors milling about in its halls.

“It’s infected,” Raphael said, not daring to touch it, lest he cause Calix more pain.

“What can you do?” Adalwolf asked. No matter how flat he tried to make the words for Calix’s sake, Raphael heard the spark of panic beneath them.

“Well,” Raphael said, considering. He took a step back, but left the central line exposed. “We could try to see if it improves with antibiotics. It’s made administering the ones he needs much easier.”

“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” Calix said. His voice still rasped, surely a side effect from the screaming nightmares, four years of disuse, and the abuse he’d suffered in the hospital.

“Right,” Raphael said, as if he’d forgotten. “We could also remove it. That’s probably the safer bet, but…”

“Take it out,” Calix said, without hesitation.

“Hang on,” Wolf said. “What if you can’t keep the medicine down after it’s out? Medicine is a lot harder on your stomach than that porridge I gave you, and you managed to puke that up.”

Calix rolled his eyes. “That was over a week ago,” he reminded him.

“We can give him antibiotics intravenously,” Raphael cut in. “The central line is more convenient, but not if the infection gets worse. If this goes septic, you’re screwed.”

“Fuck,” Wolf muttered under his breath. That was all it took. “Fine. Get it out of him. Fucking today, Ben.”

By the time Raphael was prepped and ready for the procedure, it was late in the day, and already the infection had progressed. Calix was feverish and shivery, trying in vain to read, face pinched and flushed. He clung to Adalwolf when he stood, taking small, trembling steps toward the door, his overhot body pressed to Wolf’s chest, head resting on his shoulder. Despite his height, he looked small in his brother’s arms, eyes half-lidded as Wolf all but carried him through the corridor, and then _actually_ carried him downstairs to the makeshift operating room.

“I don’t really want to risk putting him under again,” Raphael said to Wolf, who seemed to understand.

“Just make him okay,” Wolf said.

“I’ll do the best I can,” Raphael said. They both knew Calix still wasn’t stable. Even though he’d been eating, and had managed a couple trips around his bedroom with plenty of help from Wolf and Raphael, and was miraculously _still alive_ , Raphael didn’t like making these kinds of promises to Wolf. Not when Calix still sat on this precarious edge between recovery and relapse.

Two of Raphael’s staff stood by as he applied the local anaesthetic and instructed Calix through the procedure. Calix grimaced as Raphael removed the sutures anchoring the central line in place. His jaw knotted in the same way Wolf’s did when Raphael pressed on the skin surrounding it.

“Breathe out slowly,” Raphael instructed, just before he tugged at the catheter. Calix gasped, and one of Raphael’s staff handed him the dressing with ointment on it, which he pressed to the wound. “You doing okay?”

Calix nodded, though Raphael guessed Calix’s definition of “okay” was starkly different than his own. He’d put patients under for this procedure plenty of times, and none of them were in this condition.

“Okay,” he said, probably more reluctant to go through with the rest of it than Calix. This was nothing compared to the shit he’d been through in that hosp—lab. It was a fucking lab. “I’m going to remove the rest of it now. You ready?”

“Just do it,” Calix said.

“Take a deep breath for me, then,” Raphael said, and when Calix was halfway through the exhale, said, “Stop.”

Calix held his breath, though as Raphael extracted the catheter, Calix groaned and shuddered, fingers twitching as if he meant to grab Raphael’s wrist to stop him.

“Hold still,” Raphael said, gentle. “Try humming for me?”

Calix gave him a weak glare, but did as Raphael said, a low, raspy sound emanating from his chest. Raphael pulled at the catheter, steady and slow, even when Calix’s humming pitched up into a yelp, then a strangled scream, and Raphael stopped only when he’d removed the catheter. Blood trickled over Calix’s chest, one rivulet straying as far as his ribs, migrating over each ridge like a traveler through peaks and valleys. Raphael dressed the wound, which was slow to stop bleeding.

Calix was sweating, shivering madly on the table, and Raphael couldn’t get him cleaned up fast enough. As Wolf took him back to his room, Raphael couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been too late.

:::::::

Calix was worse the next morning. Both Raphael and Wolf had stayed with him all night as he slipped deeper into fever. The nightmares came and went, Calix surfacing from sleep only briefly when Wolf shook him awake. As dawn broke, Calix’s fever didn’t, raging like fire beneath his skin.

“Can’t you do anything else?” Wolf snapped at Raphael as Calix muttered in his sleep. He was nearly as white as his pillow.

“I already gave him the IV,” Raphael said, rubbing his temple, a dull headache settling behind his eyes. “I’ll need to change the dressing soon, so I can look at it then. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait.”

“Goddamn it,” Wolf hissed.

While Raphael had read one of Calix’s books on philosophy to keep himself awake all night, Wolf hadn’t taken his eyes off of Calix. Raphael didn’t want to look at him.

The wounds on Calix’s face were bandaged still, but Raphael knew what it looked like beneath them. He knew by the marks some of what the so-called doctors at that lab had done to him, cutting him up and stitching him back together just enough so he didn’t die. Raphael knew what would’ve happened—within days, if not hours—had they not attacked that particular hospital on that day. It may have been a mercy if things had turned out that way.

Calix stirred, not quite conscious, a low groan escaping his lips, eyelids fluttering like he wanted to come back, but couldn’t. Raphael didn’t want to wake him, but he had to take the opportunity when it arose.

“Calix,” he said, standing and moving closer to where Wolf sat at the head of the bed. “Calix, can you wake up for a minute?”

Calix blinked, staring hazily up at him. He didn’t seem to comprehend the words, at least not until Wolf tucked a hand under him and helped him sit up.

When Raphael took away the bandages, he grimaced. The entry point of the central line was just as angry as before, a throbbing welt covered in pus and ointment. The gauze came away bloody, the innermost layer of bandages discolored. It didn’t look good, but Raphael didn’t say so. Adalwolf already knew and Calix probably wasn’t coherent enough to care.

He applied more of the antiseptic ointment without a word, though Calix’s skin shuddered beneath his gloved hand. The wound was hot, burning up and bringing Calix with it. Raphael hated to think that after Calix had come this far, he could follow the other two patients just as easily. All it would take was a bad infection, an undetected internal injury, excessive stress or strain on his body, and that could be it.

Everyone in the militia had lost someone. But no one else had to worry about losing the same person twice.

Calix coughed as Raphael wound the bandage around his chest. It wracked his frame, and he leaned into Wolf, closing his eyes, rimmed red and charcoal, like two weeks of near constant sleep hadn’t been enough. And, Raphael supposed, it probably wasn’t. Most people would take years to recover from what Calix had been through, and Raphael knew some of these injuries would follow Calix into adulthood and old age. It was impossible to predict, with all of the mishealed breaks and his emaciated frame. Calix could gain weight, but Raphael couldn’t possibly fix it all.

They laid him back down, and Raphael picked up the trash bin with the discarded dressings.

“I’ll be back,” he said, though Wolf didn’t turn to look at him. Raphael took the long way down to the operating room, and when he got back, Wolf had his head leaning against the wall by the window, asleep.

:::::::

“I want you to stay with him.”

“What?” Raphael gaped at Wolf from where he sat on his cot in their makeshift barracks. The rest of the militia was preparing for their departure—a departure which, until this moment, Raphael thought he would be part of.

“He can’t be left alone, and I need to be on this mission,” Wolf said, tugging on his shirt, covering stony abs with a wash of black. “No one else can handle him, and I don’t trust them, anyway. Not with his fever. He’ll probably wake up and we’ll come back to someone’s head on the fucking floor.”

“What are you going to do if you come up against those sensors again?” Raphael asked, remembering their last mission when his electromagnetism was the only thing that got them into the control room. “Or the keypad locks?”

“I’ll have Ramiel do it,” Wolf said, holstering his handgun.

“Ramiel’s presenting power is creating alloys,” Raphael reminded him. “It’s not exactly the same thing.”

“But you taught him electromagnetism,” Wolf reminded him. “And that’s the next best thing to having it as a presenting power.”

It was the closest thing Wolf got to compliments, but Raphael didn’t have time to appreciate it. “He still can’t adjust the circuits without detection. If you get caught...” Raphael trailed off, rubbing two fingers against the bridge of his nose. “What happens to Calix if you don’t come back?”

“I’ll come back,” Wolf said with such certainty that Raphael almost believed him. Raphael opened his mouth to argue again, but Wolf held up a sharp hand. “You’re staying. That’s an order.”

Raphael set his jaw. If Wolf was giving _him_ direct orders, it meant something, and he had no choice but to accept it.

“Alright,” Raphael said. “But you’d better come find me immediately after you get back, and for fuck’s sake, Wolf, be careful.”

For a moment, Raphael thought Wolf might hug him, crush him in his muscular arms, but he didn’t. He only grinned, eyes alight, and brushed past him into the corridor to join the rest of the militia. Raphael watched them pack up the cars, helped them take stock, and one by one each black vehicle disappeared down the road, dipping into potholes until they turned the corner at the end of the street.

Raphael was alone with Calix Lehrer.

He climbed the stairs of the library, wandering through the stacks and feeling very exposed as the only one beneath the enormous chandelier. The silence was oppressive, and Raphael did not dislike silence. He usually relished the moments he could get away from the rest of the militia, when he took inventory, when he got a few moments to read in the back corner of the library before anyone found him, even when he was tending an unconscious patient. And yet, the idea of being alone in this vast library with Calix set him on edge.

He picked two books off the shelves before he pushed open the door to Calix’s room, where the boy lay beneath three blankets, one from Wolf’s own bed. Fever burned bright over his cheeks, but after four days, it was finally coming down. But Calix still spent most of his time sleeping and the rest of the time frustrated by how little reading he could do.

Raphael opened his own book, settling in the chair beside Calix. The room smelled vaguely like the lab, and all the others they’d infiltrated and razed to the ground, practically sterile after Wolf demanded it be cleaned again and again. Raphael hadn’t seen a speck of dust in here in days—a stark contrast from when Wolf himself had lived in this room.

The room felt like its own annex, separate from the rest of the building, as if nothing else existed but this space once they closed the door. Raphael could have been content here, had it been his room. It certainly made for a pleasant reading space.

Raphael listened to Calix’s soft, even breaths fill the room while he read. He knew most of the material already, which made for easy reading. After sitting with Calix for hours, he’d made it through one book and more than halfway through the next. The sky outside threatened rain, the barometric pressure dropping so fast that it made Raphael’s head ache with the darkening sky. He hated days like this, the ones that began deceptively blue, until the fluffy white clouds turned thunderous and malignant. It always, _always_ made him sneeze.

He was fighting a second one when Calix huffed a soft sigh beside him. And when Raphael looked, he was staring.

“Oh,” Raphael said, startled. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

Calix nodded, eyes half-lidded. “Where’s Wolf?”

“Out, for the moment,” Raphael said. “I’m afraid you’ve just got me until he gets back.”

Calix shrugged one shoulder, but Raphael could tell it bothered him. “Where is he?”

“On a mission,” Raphael admitted, once he’d weighed whether it was worth telling Calix. “It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

“Where?” Calix asked, struggling to push himself up on shaky arms.

“Upstate,” Raphael said, keeping it vague on purpose. “We got intel on another one of those labs, and everyone left this morning.”

“Not you,” Calix said, watching him, and even though his gaze looked hazy, there was a cutting, piercing quality to it.

“No,” Raphael said, with a soft smile. “Not me.”

Raphael could practically see the gears turning in Calix’s mind and his exasperation with how slowly they moved. Calix picked at a loose thread on one of his many blankets, rolling it between his finger and thumb, letting it go, rolling it again. He tapped his fingertip against the fabric until it formed an indent and then met Raphael’s eyes again.

“He wanted you to watch me.” There was nothing behind the words.

“He didn’t want to risk leaving you alone,” Raphael said, glancing reflexively to Calix’s IV bag, still half full, still dripping antibiotics down the catheter into the vein in Calix’s arm.

“He worries too much,” Calix said. He’d been sitting up for only a few minutes, but already fatigue laced his words. He rubbed his temple with two fingers, face contorting in the unmistakable grimace that came with an impressive headache.

“Maybe,” Raphael said. “But I think it might be justified this time. You’ve been pretty sick.”

“I’m getting better,” Calix insisted, frowning, and looking to his bookshelf. It was nearly full now, crammed with all the books Wolf and Raphael had brought him over the past weeks. Never enough, it seemed.

One of the books pulled itself loose from the others, an old checkout card falling from its pages and drifting down to the floor. Raphael followed _Formal and Transcendental Logic_ as it floated past him, only for it to stop right in front of him and drop itself into his lap atop his own open book. He looked down at the cover, a murky grey as dark as the sky outside, and then to Calix.

“Read it aloud,” Calix said, his expression daring Raphael to question him, and Raphael stiffened. That wasn’t persuasion, was it? He didn’t feel any different, didn’t feel the same pull as he did when he held the scalpel to his throat, the same inability to resist the command. There was no magic behind this one.

“Alright,” Raphael said, opening the book to the first page.

“Not there,” Calix said. “258. That’s where I left off.”

Raphael arched a brow, but flipped to the page Calix specified. A wall of text greeted him mid-chapter. It had been a long time since he’d read Husserl, but he could use a refresher, he supposed. And if Calix was asking—or, well, telling—Raphael to read to him, he must be bored out of his mind.

So Raphael read. Calix sat slumped at the head of the bed, listening with his eyes closed for most of the time. Raphael was surprised at how little Calix complained over mispronounced words. At one point, Raphael thought he fell back to sleep, until Raphael stopped reading for more than ten seconds, and Calix cracked an eye open to tell him to keep going.

Rain started to fall out the window. Soon, it was a washout, the downpour pounding against the window panes, the sky so dark it looked like night had already fallen, even though it was only mid-afternoon. The rain was loud, a constant waterfall, and Calix watched it run down the windows. Raphael caught glimpses of the rivers it made in the gutters along the roads outside.

They lost track of the time, and Raphael didn’t see the black vehicles returning, covered in mud as they splashed through the lot behind the university library. It wasn’t until the door flew open and Adalwolf stormed in, drenched and streaming all over the floor, that Raphael realized anyone had come back.

“Wolf, what the—” Raphael began, but Adalwolf cut him off.

“Shut up,” Adalwolf snapped, and Raphael knew the mission hadn’t gone as planned. “You’re the one who wanted me to find you as soon as I got back.”

“I meant…” Raphael started, but shook his head. “Never mind.”

Wolf glanced from Raphael to Calix, wide-eyed in bed, to the book in Raphael’s lap, now closed over, water droplets from Wolf’s dripping hair flecked on the cover. “What is it, story time? You’re supposed to be resting,” he said, words directed at Calix.

“I am,” Calix said. “I thought I’d make Raphael useful.” He held his hand out for the book, and Raphael set it in his lap. Calix looked more awake now, a touch of amusement in his grey eyes.

“You could’ve changed before you came up,” Raphael said, rising from his seat. “I didn’t even know you were back.”

“Yeah, well, nearly drowned on the way,” Wolf said, plucking his dark shirt away from his skin. “Thought you might have a raft waiting for us.”

Raphael’s mouth twitched in a grin. “Next time.”

“I’d rather not repeat this one,” Wolf said, and Raphael knew there was something he wasn’t saying. He’d get it out of Wolf later—and probably, so would Calix.

Raphael touched a hand to the end of Calix’s bed, the equivalent of resting it on Calix’s shoulder. Calix only glanced up at him, already engrossed in his book. 

“I’ll be back later,” Raphael assured him, though Calix was unfazed. He only locked eyes with Wolf for a moment, and Wolf broke first. Raphael nudged him toward the door. “Let’s go. Last thing you need with all this is to catch a cold because you were too stupid to take a shower before you ran around the library.”

“Some doctor you are,” Wolf said, though he moved into the hall with Raphael. “No one gets sick from that.”

“Mm,” Raphael hummed, grinning in earnest now. “Just get to the showers and tell me about the mission.”

Wolf’s face turned grim, but he did what he was told, for once. Raphael wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about this one, wondered what exactly had happened to make Wolf’s jaw set like that, to make that knot appear in his cheek. It wouldn’t be the first time a mission had gone sour, and it wouldn’t be the last. Raphael couldn’t help but wonder if things would have turned out differently had he not been by Calix’s bedside with a book in his lap, reading, while Wolf and the others trudged through the storm.

While Raphael waited downstairs, Nakir and a few of the others came in soaked to the skin, leaving soggy footprints across the floor. Nakir was scowling, but it didn’t look like the same one she wore when their missions failed.

“What happened?” Raphael asked.

Nakir jumped and glanced up, as if she hadn’t realized he was standing right there. Her dark hair was plastered to her forehead and neck, hanging in stringy clumps around her face where it had come free from her ponytail.

“We fucking destroyed the place,” Nakir said, wringing out her hair so it splattered on the laminate.

Raphael mirrored her frown. “But Uriel said something went wrong. What was it?”

“What are you…” Nakir looked puzzled for a moment, but trailed off as a spark of recognition flared behind her eyes. She rolled them. “Oh, that. It started raining just as we were setting off the bombs. A few of them didn’t detonate properly, so only half the lab went down until me and Gabriel got in and took the rest of it. Uriel’s just pissed because his pyromancy was useless.”

Raphael couldn’t help but crack a smile. “How terrible for him.”

“Yeah, I think we were all glad he drove back by himself,” Nakir said, wringing out her shirt next. “Ugh, I’ve gotta go take a shower.”

She stalked off, boots squeaking against the floor, and Raphael couldn’t help but think he should’ve known that a mission that didn’t have bombs and pyrokinesis at the center was only a few steps short of failure to Adalwolf. It wouldn’t stop them from drinking and celebrating the win tonight, and Wolf would tell Calix it was a success once he warmed up again. But that didn’t mean Raphael couldn’t see under Wolf’s skin to where, pyromancy or not, it was never, never enough.


End file.
